I view it is nice, but unnecessary, that you are holding Town Halls for the dissolution of the BCC Advisory Boards.Â

They are BCC chartered and enabled Advisory Boards: the "Bylaws" are very, very clear.Â If the Legal Beagles claim they messed up the ordinance, maybe the Legal Beagles are a problem that you need to fix.

Unless the proposed "Town Hall" has at least as many folk as attended the Chamber's "Bite of Mt. Hood" (~700), they are just the choir of folk wanting their hand in the till or confused folk not nowing how to contribute.

Complete Communities should be entirely Community driven with Community support/donations,
........to raise issues and concerns to the BCC,
with no County Tax monies for grubbing fingers to grab.

The Clackamas County Board of County Commissioners is having a policy session on SeptemberÂ 6, 2016 about the dead carcass of the "Villages at Mt. Hood.Â It has been on hiatus since February when the 3 folk still on it were "let go".
(I note: being bullies, they deny that the they were "let go", or ever did gender discrimination, or....

July 18, 2016=> Rip-rap in the Sandy to make a lot buildable (and reflect water to "other" people"?
=> Complete Communities tax money "missing" on sound systems, laptop projectors, etc?
The pursue of tmoney!
......read more

The Clackamas County Board of County Commissioners are having a policy session over the dead carcass of the "Villages at Mt. Hood.

Â Bottom line:

The County should hire more employees, Â spend more tax money.

The CPOs are important

we want stuff done for us

we have (unspecified/this year) needs and you should pay for them.

gender discrimination, bullying, etc is all good.

Huge deal: won't cost much cash/$, just hire a bunch of goberment drones

The form is clear: "financial implications: $2000"

But, of course, that is "cash out of hand" and they can't be bothered to include the very minor(?) amount spent on:
staffing!
Yes, salary, benefits, vacations, office space, management, etc, are all free! free! free!
....or at least they can build a bigger empire and get paid More $! More $Â More $$$$
......read more

Unless, of course, the County's goal is to tax more, hire more staff, and spend more money.

You are now on the "stage" to manage the next steps of the "Complete Communities".

The appeals court has stomped on the SLAPP against the County/CPO/private folk that will likely cost the bully at least $70,000 for part of the SLAPP.Â This is now in the final stages and you need to reinvigorate the CPO, as required by the state.

As the dissolution of the (former) City of Damascus shows, what starts with excellent intents, often gets sidetracked by bullies and ego-centric folk who "know" what needs to be done and push everyone else to "take a long walk off a short pier".

The addition of color, huge numbers of ads, and a few "columns" has certainly increased the page count of the monthly paper.

It is sad that you did not add any significant "local news" to the paper.Â While ads are good and profitable, most local folk want to know what is happening.
Â The Villages provided many opportunities for truly interesting investigative report, but, apparently, it was swept "under the rug".

It was 10 years ago that the Villages and other Complete Communities were enabled by Clackamas County ordinance.Â They were to give voice to the "needs and issues" of the citizens of specific communities.Â Metro/Stump Town and the UGB was one Community's Â issue.Â Deteriorating Community Center and bike/ped paths were anothers.

The Complete Communities program is now being reviewed.
It is well that it should be.
You have a number of years of experience in managing this program amidst the very busy work load of useful things the County must accomplish with the Federal, State, and local jurisdictions.

Including fully burdened employee time, effort, etc and the minor cash budget (mis) used by the 3 Complete Communities left and the 2 carcasses, is actually
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â several $100,000s of dollars.
This does not seem to be a wise use of funds.
Â => giving tax money to neer-du-wells to buy sound systems, laptop projectors, replace Town Hall signs they "misplaced", sue cities, etc is less than useful.

We seemed to have another County inspired/mitigated disaster: they don't care about how the Villages folk are selected, => it is all good.
"Certifying" false things to the State of Oregon, the BCC, the Community? Gender discrimination? "no problumo".

Ten years ago, the Strategic Planning Committee, supportively led by Shirley Duber, founded one of the first "Complete Communities". New Community Center! Bus service! Trails! Paths!....

Forming a new BCC Advisory Board, to better represent the community, is exciting.Â All the community project can get "standing" with the county and, even better, an official "Community Venue:" where they can engage the community for help.

But the recent work by County Employees highlights the risk:
==> it's a Roach Hotel!! <==

It is official: the Villages has displayed itself as totally clueless.
While there is strong evidence from their proposed Amphitheater, their tax paid for/ego building name tags/business cards/proposed Polo shirts/etc, ignoring the community, not holding Town Halls, etc,

==> the survey "takes the cake";
it wins the "Forest Grubber of the year" award
(you know: "stupid is as stupid does" and "the community/you are too stupid to understand".)

Complete Communities was intended to allow the "community" to have more input to the Board of County Commissioners (BCC).
=> The BCC is now engaged in an immediate discussion about:
....."how do the Villages and Hamlets demonstrate they represent the community?"
TheÂ numerous complaints of "bullying" and other issues, and, especially, a lack of community input/representation, has prompted this discussion.
It appears the former Liaison had cultivated a Pollyanna, "hands off' approach,
that allowed bullies and ego-centric zealots to grab "position" for personal ends.Â Â Unfortunately, the previous BCCs ignored the Villages and Hamlets.Â That allowed
them to fester under the very junior guidance of this "former Liaison".
Molalla planned on having an election:
.....6 openings, same old 6 people "running"
with no evidence there will be more than 6 or 12 votes cast
......to "represent" 3500 people.
No mailing, no outreach, a bit of CYA paper posting.

In Villages, 3 openings, 2 people "running", and "18 votes" last time, when the count was extracted from them.

This does notÂ "represent" 4500 residents and 8,000 summer people.Â

Where are the mailings, outreach, more than a bit of CYA paper posting?

Congrats to Jan, Harry, and Barbara!
They each conjectured that the BOD would slither away and not do anything.
Sure enough: after a bunch of blather (especially on how bad a certain Susan Corwin is)
they agreed, verbally, with no vote to "take no action"!
Whooo Hooo! Lying to the State of Oregon is just "what we do"!
â™Şâ™Şâ™Ş Send in the Clowns...
don't bother, they're hereâ™Şâ™Şâ™«

This seems to be just too funny to really happen: it must just be "creative writing"

It seems that our illustrative "Chair of the Villages of the Darned" is slithering and sliming to keep from being "responsible" for leadership or "representing the community".
isn't lying to the State of Oregon just OK?

With great effort, I managed to acquire the, apparently secret, "ConnectOregon" Grant request submitted, allegedly, by the "Villages at Mt. Hood BOD".
I see why they decided "the stinking community don't need to see this" and all I can say is:

Uh-Oh! Not Good, Not Good At All.

Grant Request was Submitted

It is clear that ODOT thinks this grant request was submitted "on time" by Nov. 27, 2013.
From the PDF of "submitted grants" we can see the submission

Uh Oh.
A couple of "minor" problems:

there is no record that the "Villages at Mt. Hood BOD ever saw or approved submitting this that I could find. A vote of at least 4 members is required and in the minutes up to Nov. 27 (or even March 31, 2014), while there was pompous bluster by the "submitter", there was never approval.
Note: Since Mr. Wilson was the grant recipient, he must, of course, recuse himself.

August 22, 2013The handle bars vibrated continuously. The seat poked up and down, the peddles conveyed the rough surface to the legs, the bike wobbled with the lurching steering:it was chip seal!
Who in the world was the clueless wonder who pushed everyone aside to
protect only part of the route!......read more

When I requested copies of any new applications or resubmitted ones for the 4 open positions on the
Clackamas County Complete Communities BCC Advisory BoardVillages at Mt. Hood
I got the response, No New Applications

January 15, 2013It's official:
no minutes, no recordings, no record - except what they make up
about the meeting on Saturday.
!!There shalt be no official written output of the "town hall"!! ......read more

January 10, 2013What's wrong with these folk?They seem to be preoccupied with spending their allocation of tax dollars to buy
business cards and personal polo shirts for themselves than worry about keeping the community informed so they don't endanger children! ......read more

October 9, 2012The Darned Folk fumbled away a tremendous opportunity to do something for the community. Loafing along, they seemed to let their bureauocratic overseer pander to her bosses so that the Town Hall worthless asked only softball, namby-pamby questions in front of an empty room. ......read more

June 8, 2012At least one Darned folk, one with a long history with the Villages, didn't realize she need to "apply" (what? Who needs a stinking application) to retain her seat on the shrunken BOD. ......read more

At the December 6, 2011 BOD meeting, one of the BOD members, apparently summarizing the BOD's position on an ODOT action, said:
"I am opposed to ODOT or any Government organization positioning themselves that they don't account to anybody."

It is truly a sad reflection on their integrity that, at the very next meeting, January 3, 2012, that Clackamas County Advisory Board schemed that the community should not be informed that Cam Gilmore, a key person in Clackamas County staff, will be attending the February meeting.

The BOD meeting of 2011-02-01 of the Villages of the Darned was enlightening from the discussion that they had on how the community is to â€śvoteâ€ť for BOD members.

The fact that they have had an open position for a year now and no one in the community wants to associate with these folk is a big embarrassment. Added to that was that the community managed to eliminate the most outrageous snake-oil bully last year really aggravates them.
......read more

When, Oh When, Is The Meeting?

April 5, 2010

Meeting notices? Meeting notices?
"We don't need no stinking notices" (to paraphase from Treasure of Sierra Madre :-)
After all, the 7 days called out in the 'bylaws'...
"they aren't laws, they are just guidelines"
(quoting from a recent 'former chair').
........read more

Introduction: A Good Idea Corrupted

It is always sad when unbounded enthusiasm of volunteers of a volunteer organization gets ground into withdrawal and resentment by pompous, self anointed "leaders". Leaders who are:

mostly kindly described as incompetent and clueless

some older ones may seem to "be losing it,

gain their position through wily, slick, less than honest talk and positioning

if deceit doesn't work, then resorting to simple bullying and intimidation works wonders in eliminating volunteer contributions, and

have a small number of close sycophant and parasites to do the dirty work

While we see these behaviors everyday in "politics", it is most disappointing when it occurs in volunteer organizations that are attempting to do projects for their community.
........read more

8.2 Hiding the Election from SightJune 16, 2008

In politics as in marketing, it is all about

a) what information is available to the voter/consumer,
b) how to keep information about your competition from the voter/consumer, and
c) how to spread misinformation about your competition)

In this commentary, we will look at how the incumbents, with the assistance of the County Bureaucrat, withheld information from the Community.
=> with the effect of keeping the election and the lone non-incumbent, Community Member's candidacy a secret......read more of section 8.2

8. May 2008: The Second Anniversary of the Formation of theVillages of the Darned

Rigging the Election to Keep the Cronies on the Board

8.1 Rigging the Application Process to Keep People From Being Candidates

The easiest way to make sure your crony friends are "elected" to help you control the Community is to make sure no one else runs!
=> If there are 4 positions and only your 4 friends run, why then it would be very hard to lose.

In this commentary, we will look at how the incumbents, with the assistance of the County Bureaucrat, withheld information from the Community.

8.3Biasing the Election Brochure

Elections, even for a farce such as the Villages of the Darned, are always scrutinized for 'fairness". Issues of "who is first", positioning of statements, etc, can be determining factors in a close election.

The County Bureaucrat, VJG, either with malicious intent or just stumbling, managed to do a number of things to make sure the "outsider" was at as big a disadvantage as possible.